8bit4Life

2023 has been a great year for video games. Zelda: TotK, and then Final Fantasy 16 have been like getting Christmas twice in just a couple months span.

I have absolutely loved FF16, and for me personally, it’s my favorite FF since FF6 back on the Super Nintendo.

Good call, my fellow Push Square reader team! FFXVI is certainly my favorite game of the year so far, narrowly nudging out that giant game on Switch that came out a month prior.

I'm close to the end of FFXVI. As a fan of Soken ever since the amazing trailer for Heavensward, I particularly like the music in this game.

I finally broke and downloaded the demo last night after learning that progress carries over to the retail version.

It absolutely blew me away! Best opening 2 hours in any FF game, and I have been there since FF1 as a wee lad.

I was very late to the Witcher 3 party, always wanting to play it, but so many other games taking my time.

Finally I decided to give it my full attention when the PS5 version came out.

This made me realize that I was putting off one of the best games I’ve ever experienced.

Curious question: Why does the official artwork show Geralt holding his sword and sheath like that? It’s always on his back in the game.

We’re a month away from launch day, and every gaming minute until then is focused on Tears of the Kingdom. Honestly, after Zelda’s insanely vast 3 layer cake of open world, I will be ready for FFXVI’s more focused style.

The author has similar tastes in Final Fantasy as I do. 12 was awesome, 13 was forgettable, 14 was an MMO (I played a lot of that one through Heavensward), 15 was a fun bro road trip with a dash of Final Fantasy flavor - good, but not great.

FF16 looks great. I’m going to call my chocobo “Roach” because the game reminds me of another that I enjoyed.

I’m subscribed to Extra and I have no time to play much of what’s available. My backlog is huge.

To compound matters, Horizon Blazing Shores, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Final Fantasy 16 are all coming out over the next couple months, starting next week.

It’s a great problem to have.

I just finished playing Witcher 3, all the way through Blood and Wine.

FF16 looks exactly like what I would expect if Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy 14 had a baby.

This game could be amazing.

Mazda3!!!

It’s always fun to see a car that I own put into the game. Mazda is a very underrated brand.

We’re going to reach a point where any publications actually written by people will have a special label, like the organic vegetables at the market.

Of course, realistically I agree with you.

But I would love a PS5 that doesn’t need to choose between Performance and Ray Tracing modes.

A PS5 Pro would be a great intermediary between now and PS6.

If supplies are opening up, maybe they can crank out a mid-cycle upgrade. I got my PS5 in February 2021, so I’m willing to jump up to a PS5 Pro and put my old one in the spare room for the kids.

I’m totally fine with action RPGs as long as the game is well-made.

I grew up with FF and Dragon Warrior on NES, and then every RPG I could find as a kid through the SNES, PlayStation, and up. Even though I enjoyed turn-based gameplay, I saw it as being a limitation of what could be done in order to tell a bigger story, and we had to use our imaginations to fill in what the hardware and graphics of the time couldn’t do.

Today’s games are very much what I imagined when I would play Dragon Warrior 4 on NES, but now they are fully realized.

My older brother still says that RPGs should only be turn-based, and he really likes nostalgia-inducing games. I get that, but I like to play new stuff too.

This game is sounding very similar to Witcher 3, which is a very good game to be compared to.

I say this as I am finally playing Witcher 3 for the first time on PS5. Wow, what an amazing game I have procrastinated to play! I’m honestly torn between Witcher 3 and Zelda BotW for the best game of their genre.

If FFXVI is a Final Fantasy version of what I have been experiencing with Geralt, I will be very happy.

I’m still figuring out how to get the best image quality from my headset. GT7 and Horizon can be just a bit blurry. This is my first VR experience, so I will get better at using it soon.

That said, I have an extremely weak left eye that was completely turned inward at birth, but I have managed to straighten over the years. I’m wondering if this affects the eye-tracking rendering, somehow confusing the processing. I can see out of my left eye, yet I don’t have 100% binocular function as a person without my condition does.

I’m curious to know if others with eye problems have noticed this in VR applications.

MGS3 is my favorite in the series. It really pushed the PS2 hardware to its limits.

I’ve had no technical issues yet. The right controller has been working great, but firing arrows at Glint Hawks last night wore out my right shoulder.

@Daleaf No, I am in the US. Looks like Sony had them stockpiled in Ohio at a distribution center, which isn’t too far from me, probably allowing it to reach me sooner than expected.

My PSVR2 is showing as out for delivery today, on the UPS truck. I’m kind of bummed that the GT7 update won’t be available until tomorrow.

Hopefully Horizon Call of the Mountain will work without a hitch.

I would like to pay launch price, but we saw what happened with the PS5 itself.

The PSVR2 will be scalped for much more.

My brother gets 100GB of high speed data per month on his T-Mobile Home Internet. This would be a deal breaker for people like him.

150GB is even a giant chunk out of my 1.2TB cap with Comcast.

I’m probably the only person on the planet who hasn’t played Elden Ring. I’ll get to it eventually.

The only Ys game I have played was Ys III: Wanderers From Ys on Super Nintendo. It was a good Zelda II type of side-scroller, along with manga style scenes. It seemed really cool in the early 90s.

Interesting. I’ve wondered about how that worked for the developers. Now we know. And now I will feel a tinge of guilt when I add a game to my library, but never play it, knowing that Sony had to pay a nice sum for it.

Seems to me that Yoshida may have also been trying to separate FF16 from the prior FF15. FF15 was a modern setting and 3 of the bros (Noct, Prompto, and Gladio) had American accents, while my boy Iggy was the only British lad.

I’m in the shunned FF corner that actually really enjoyed FF15. Not so much as a Final Fantasy game, but as a road-trip with friends, with hints of Final Fantasy flavor mixed in.

I bought NMS at launch on PS4, and admittedly it wasn’t as good as the speculation. However, I did spend a lot of time bouncing from planet to planet, simply for the joy of exploring.

This past weekend I loaded up the PS5 version and the quality of life improvements with the more powerful hardware and the game updates vastly changed the overall experience. It’s still No Man’s Sky, but it’s it’s like a iPhone 3G next to a iPhone 12 Pro. Everything is better, yet recognizable.

@themightyant I feel the same. The overused Car-PG term with Gran Turismo is accurate because it’s a racing game, and a journey. I want to live in this game for a bit and work my way to a garage of cool cars that I am invested in.

I’m not surprised that micro transactions are in the game. I’ve played WoW and FFXIV for years and an online shop is pretty normal. Granted, those shops mostly serve up non play-enhancing items, but I would compare buying cars in GT7 to buying a leveling-skip in FFXIV. Players that earn their way to the top through play will likely know how to race better than the people who buy their way up.

But on the flip-side, if you are a seasoned racer and you see a car that you want down the road, and don’t have the credit, why not have an option to pay for it? A game like this costs many millions of dollars to develop and continue developing. You have to monetize it somehow.